1. Field
The embodiments discussed herein are related to an optical (or wavelength) dispersion compensator, an optical transmission apparatus, an optical transmission system, and method of controlling same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a related art, a transmission apparatus performs bidirectional optical communication by transmitting optical signals having wavelengths that are different between in an upstream direction and a downstream direction. There is a general optical transmission apparatus that performs bidirectional wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical communication by unifying transmission paths for bidirectionally-transmitted optical signals into one direction by using a multiplexer. Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 11-127121 discusses such an optical transmission apparatus that includes, for example, a collective dispersion compensation unit that collectively compensates dispersion of each of optical signals having wavelengths that are different between in an upstream direction and a downstream direction which are unified into one direction.
And, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-78081 discusses an apparatus that enables compensation of optical (wavelength) dispersion with respect to wide-band WDM signal light. For example, this document discusses an optical amplifier in which: wavelength-multiplexed signal light is demultiplexed and sent to an optical fiber amplification unit for each wavelength band; and the signal light of each wavelength band which has passed through a corresponding variable optical attenuator, is multiplexed once and sent to a dispersion compensation fiber (DCF) to collectively perform dispersion compensation with respect to each wavelength band.